


bloodhound

by malignance



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21777442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignance/pseuds/malignance
Summary: Wand or no wand, Hermione Granger is a threat.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bill Weasley, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 181





	bloodhound

"Mudblood."

Hermione stops, mid-step, head whipping around to face whoever had just spoken.

She doesn't know what the word means. She is eleven, and learning, and learning, and learning, but she doesn't know everything, not yet.

Ron stills beside her, eyes narrowing.

She takes it to mean _mudblood_ was an insult.

When she doesn't react, he bends down, whispers low, in her ear, and tells her exactly what it means.

Hermione's anger flares up, from somewhere in her stomach, and she's reminded of home. _Home._ When someone had pulled on her hair and laughed. _Home._ When her mother had been called into school and took one look at her bloodied hands and gasped. _Home._ Her anger, her temper, her rage. 

She'd hoped by now she could resist, she could use her words. But words, words are not always as effective as she'd like them to be.

She forgets her wand (she never had magic at home, just her fists, just her), and lunges. 

She does not even know the name of the student under the robes she was pulling on. It doesn't matter to her, nothing much matters to her. She pulls her arm back and pushes her fists forward with such strength, such force, they don't have time to react before she is standing over them, blood on her knuckles, terrifying smile on her face.

Harry, behind her, sighs, mumbles something she can't hear under his breath, and picks up the wand of the nameless student with the now broken nose.

They are powerless now, and Hermione smiles so much wider, blood still dripping from her hand, and they shiver. There's fear in their eyes now, contempt, _respect._

Slytherins are smart, in some ways, they sneak and they lie and they stab you in the back. Hermione doesn't need that. She knows it is better to attack from the front, teeth bared, fists ready.

"You shouldn't have said that." Ron mutters, as Harry snaps the offender's wand. 

They are useless now, wandless, magicless. And Hermione knows that is why she will always win, because she has her fists, and she knows how to use them.

Wand or no wand, Hermione Granger is a threat. 

*

"She's- she's like some sort of guard dog."

Hermione's used to this by now. The whispering, the looking, the laughing.

She'd fought the first few, then realised there was no point. They'd keep talking, and pointing, and it wouldn't matter how many of them she broke. 

Dumbledore had spoken to her once, about this, about the scars on her hands and the bruises on her fingers. He'd told her violence wasn't the answer. She nodded, and pretended she understood.

She doesn't think it untrue, that she's some sort of guard dog, fangs bared, ready to attack if anyone were to harm her or her friends.

But none of them seemed to realise it went both ways. 

Someone had shot a hex at her once, from a distance so she wouldn't know, couldn't defend herself. 

Her teeth started to grow, and Hermione screamed at the sensation. 

No one laughed, no one dared to laugh. Not at Hermione, not when it was her, not when they could see her anger bubbling just beneath the surface. 

She'd stood, class be damned, and stormed straight to the hospital wing.

Ron and Harry had stayed behind, eyes searching for the culprit behind the attack.

When they did, they moved fast, followed them after class, cornered them in the bathroom. Harry cast a silencing spell, Ron locked the door, and they practiced their hexes and curses freely until they felt they were done.

"You will not harm Hermione again, and you will speak of this to no one." Harry demanded, and then he and Ron both left, leaving a sobbing mess of a student on the bathroom floor.

*

Everyone lapses into a shocked kind of silence as Hermione glides in, hair pinned to the top of her head, wrapped in a gown so flattering and so _pretty_ it didn't seem to fit her at all.

It didn't matter to them much that she had entered on Viktor Krum's arm, just that she had looked so different, so beautiful, and no one could deny it.

She was dangerous, always had been, and now she was pretty too, and nobody knew how to deal with what that meant.

Viktor dances with her, spins her around and pulls her close, and she laughs, free, loud. No one is able to take their eyes off her.

She takes turns dancing with Viktor, then Ron, then Harry. And when Fred and George close in on her, matching grins on their faces, she dances with the both of them at the same time.

She never stops getting asked after that, is offered hand after hand for dance after dance. So many had been sure she'd start rejecting them after a while, but she dances the whole night, with anybody and everybody who had asked, and doesn't stop laughing the entire time.

Then there is confusion, because no one is sure if they are to be afraid of her, or enticed.

Hermione grins, predatory, and most of them settle knowing that they could be _both._

*

Draco is quiet. He had been loud once, before he knew better.

Then Hermione had walked up to him, fires dancing in her eyes, and had slapped him so hard his legs gave out from under him.

He started watching her after that, plotting and scheming and wishing somehow he could find out how to make her pay for what she'd done to him.

But Ron and Harry were never far behind, shooting him a knowing look when he was lurking. They promise things when they look at him, whispering threats into the air without having to say the words.

The more he looks at her, at the way she laughs with all her body, fights with her fists as easy as she breathes, practices spells without the grace and elegance needed but perfecting it somehow anyway, the more he loses himself.

He takes her hand one day, and pulls her into an empty room.

He expects her to fight, to thrash, to pull herself free from his grip. But she doesn't move, just looks at him, like she knew he wasn't here to try and hurt her.

He presses his lips together, angry that she wasn't scared, angry that she had figured him out so easily.

"I hate you." He spits, and closes in and kisses her.

When she kisses back, hard, and bruising, he isn't surprised. 

*

Hermione thinks she might like Bellatrix a bit.

She was as good with her wand as she was without it, and Hermione can't help but smile. It's a shame that Bellatrix was hell bent on hurting her.

She lays there, still, and lets Bellatrix laugh as she carves out the 'M' on her arm.

Hermione decides to let Bellatrix finish, because she thinks she might like having a scar like that, she thinks she might be able to make it useful, later.

_Mudblood._

As soon as Bellatrix is finished, Hermione lunges forwards, snatching Bellatrix's wand out from her hand and snapping it in half.

Then she has Bellatrix flipped on her back, spread out underneath her, and Hermione grins as her hands find their way around Bellatrix's neck.

Bellatrix spits, and gasps, and fights, but Hermione's hold on her neck is tight, and she squeezes, and squeezes, and squeezes and channels all her magic into her fingers as it presses into her throat. 

Bellatrix dies, so disappointingly easy, limp and breathless in her hands. Hermione frowns, at how easy it had been, at how she thought Bellatrix might've put up more of a fight.

Then she rises to stand, steps over Bellatrix's cold body, and walks out to find her boys.

*

Bill hadn't actually seen much of Hermione before the war.

When she shows up, blood on her lips, twigs in her hair, grinning despite the injury, despite the war, he flinches.

There is something about her that is so abrasive, so forceful, so unlike his wife. 

His wife is quiet and soft and calm and smiles when he walks into the room, places a gentle hand on his shoulder.

At night, when he can't sleep and walks into the kitchen, Hermione greets him with a jerk of her head, her calloused, bruised fingers wrapped around _his_ mug. 

"Can't sleep?" He asks, his voice coming out scratchy, and vulnerable.

She meets his gaze over the rim of her tea, and shrugs. "It's easier for me to plan at night."

"What are you planning?"

They talk and it means nothing to him. He barely hears a word she says, too busy focusing on her lips, as they press into the edge of his mug, as they open to speak. 

His wife is in their bed, sleeping, and he knows, he is so painfully aware. And still he cannot look away.

"That's my mug." He says eventually, cutting into her words without a care.

She looks down at the mug, then up at him, and quirks an eyebrow. 

He steps forward, taking the mug out of her hand and placing it onto the counter, before pushing her against it and kissing the living daylights out of her.

The mug stays on that kitchen counter, even as Hermione pulls Bill into her room, and locks the door. 

*

Voldemort is so much _shorter_ than Hermione had pictured, and she frowns.

She thinks about how easy it would be for her to latch onto him, to pound and pound and pound on him until his bones broke beneath her knuckles. 

But this is not her fight, she knows. She watches, not at all scared, not at all worried, as Harry steps forward to meet him. 

Ron is beside her, and he holds her hand. There is no comfort in that action, but she lets him hold her, lets him feel like he has her for this moment. 

Voldemort crumples in on himself, a disgraceful, ugly display. And dies, small and withered and disgusting.

Hermione scrunches her nose at the sight, and walks with Ron towards Harry, who stares down at Voldemort's corpse, lips twitching into a grin.

"I didn't think it was going to be that easy." He says, and Ron laughs.

Hermione kicks Voldemort's small, broken corpse, and laughs too.


End file.
